Wonder if there are any e30s in other galaxies?
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Estoril E36 M3/4/5 | Toledo E53 X5 3.0 | LeMans E90 335D M-Sport
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Image of GRB 080319B The extremely luminous afterglow of GRB 080319B was imaged by Swift's X-ray Telescope (left) and Optical/Ultraviolet Telescope (right). This was by far the brightest gamma-ray burst afterglow ever seen. Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler, et al.
> larger image Astronomers are familiar with seeing amazing things through their telescopes. But nothing prepared them for an incredible explosion detected early Wednesday morning by NASA's Swift satellite. At 2:12 a.m. EDT, Swift detected an explosion from deep space that was so powerful that its afterglow was briefly visible to the naked eye. Even more astonishing, the explosion itself took place halfway across the visible universe!
Never before has anything so far away come even close to naked-eye visibility. The explosion was so far away that it took its light 7,500,000,000 (7.5 billion) years to reach Earth! In fact, the explosion took place so long ago that Earth had not yet come into existence.
"No other known object or type of explosion could be seen by the naked eye at such an immense distance," says Swift science team member Stephen Holland of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We don't know yet if anyone was looking at the afterglow at the time it brightened to peak visibility. But if someone just happened to be looking at the right place at the right time, they saw the most distant object ever seen by human eyes without optical aid."
If you venture out to a remote location and gaze into the sky on a dark, moonless night, the farthest object you can see with your naked eye is a spiral galaxy called M33. The galaxy is far away by Earthly standards, but it is nearby on a cosmic distant scale. The light from M33 takes 2,900,000 (2.9 million) years to reach Earth, making it thousands of times closer than the March 19 explosion.
Image of GRB 080319B GRB 080319B's optical afterglow appears in the center of this image from Pi of the Sky, a Polish group that monitors the sky for afterglows and other short-lived sources. Credit: Pi of the Sky
> Larger image
> View animation at Pi in the Sky's Web site The explosion itself is called a gamma ray burst, since much of the explosion's energy was in the form of gamma rays. A gamma ray is a type of light with energy far higher than the light we see with our eyes. Most gamma ray bursts originate when huge stars die and explode. Instead of blowing material in all directions, they channel an incredible amount of energy into two high-speed jets, like turbocharged cosmic blowtorches.
When these jets plow into surrounding clouds of gas, they light up the gas, generating an afterglow that can be seen by telescopes in space and on Earth. The afterglows generally get fairly bright, but never before has an afterglow been visible to the naked eye. The March 19 gamma ray burst's afterglow was bright enough for about 30 seconds that someone could have seen it without a telescope or binoculars.
"Even by the standards of gamma-ray bursts, this burst was a whopper," says Swift lead scientist Neil Gehrels of NASA Goddard. "It blows away every gamma ray burst we've seen so far."
Astronomers have just begun their scientific analysis of the burst, so they do not know yet why it was so powerful, and why the afterglow was so much brighter than other afterglows. Perhaps the burst itself was more energetic than other bursts, or perhaps its jets were very narrow, and were aimed directly at Earth.
Swift normally detects about two gamma ray bursts per week. But March 19 was a special day. The satellite detected four bursts on that day, which is a Swift record for one day. "Coincidentally, the passing of Arthur C. Clarke the day before seems to have set the universe ablaze with gamma ray bursts," says Swift science team member Judith Racusin of Penn State University in University Park, Pa.
Robert Naeye
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sw...htest_grb.html (article and pictures)
http://grb.fuw.edu.pl/pi/ot/grb080319b/normal.html (video)
I thought that was interesting that it could have been seen with the naked eye from that far away. In above links you can see the pictures and short video of the exploding star.Comment
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odds are, there are many e30's out there...
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Not as cool without the music...
:)
If you couple some of the ideas in string theory about dimensions with how vast the galaxy is... its even more mind-blowing!
6-11 alternate dimensions (that are speculated so far) in the entire universe... Its like have 6-11 times the amount of stars and planets. Anything could be possible. There could be life on mars and venus in a different dimension and we would have no idea.
Anyway.
Awesome thread.
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BF2142 SN = BillyGooseComment
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Not as cool without Giorgio Moroder
SILBER COMBAT UNIT DELTA (M-Technic Marshal)
RTFM:http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=56950Comment
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I've thought about this before, but never to this extent.
You really could go insane trying to make sense of it all. Quite frankly, I think it reeaally sucks that in my lifetime on earth, I'll never get to really learn what this infinitely large universe holds.
Maybe when we die, our souls live eternally, and have the ability to travel at an unlimited speed because we would be in a seperate dimension or something?
It's funny that we as humans could be as smart as ants compared to another lifeform present in the universe....- Sean HayesComment
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What If C A T really spelled Dog lol
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yeah, I was actually going to add that. I've thought about heaven as being able to roam the universe and its many beautiful worlds. I for sure feel heaven won't just be a state or whatever. I still believe we will be able to feel, taste, smell, hear, see etc.. I'm not even one to judge whether we would utilize vehicles or something!Comment
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